EPISTEMOLOGY
AND INFORMATION SCIENCE

Rafael
Capurro

This
paper was one of three lectures at the Royal Institute of Technology
Library
(Stockholm, Sweden) in 1985. It was published as REPORT TRITA-LIB-6023
(August 1985, Ed. Stephan Schwarz) (ISSN 0346-9042). The first part is
based on my doctoral dissertation: Information
(Munich 1978). In the second and third parts I develop some ideas
published
later in my post-doctoral dissertation: Hermeneutik
der
Fachinformation
(Freiburg 1986).
The
following text is a slightly modified version of the TRITA-Report.
See
also:

Abstract

This
paper deals
with
epistemological
foundations of information science. The first part is dedicated to the
analysis of the roots of the information concept particularly in
everyday
English. I give an example of the technical use of the term in medieval
epistemology (Thomas Aquinas) and compare it with the concept of representation
in modern cognitive science. In the second part, I discuss the paradigm
of human understanding as developed by hermeneutics. The third part
deals
with the relation between hermeneutics and information science.

I.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

As
information
science has become increasingly acquainted with advanced problems of
knowledge
representation, processing and retrieval, some implicit epistemological
questions and models within this field have been the subject of
discussions
particularly over the past few years. However, this dialogue between
epistemology
and information science which began fairly recently has a long
tradition
with regard to the concept of information. The term information
itself has a very rich epistemological background. It was used in
classical
Latin, for instance by Cicero, to denote the pictorial representation
of
objects in the human mind as well as the process of teaching, i.e., of
forming the mind through knowledge communication (1).

The
Latin term informatio became a terminus technicus in
medieval
epistemology and ontology and played an important role in the
rationalist
and empiricist theories of knowledge of modern philosophy. Today the
concept
of information is, on the one hand, very difficult to define as it is
used
in many different areas, not only in philosophy but also in the natural
and social sciences (2). This
confusing
situation can
be considered, on the other hand, as a symptom of its theoretical
relevance.

In
this lecture I will first analyze the word and concept of
information.
We understand the meaning of words, as Wittgenstein reminds us (3),
when we know how they are used. I will take as an example the medieval
concept of informatio in Thomas Aquinas' theory of knowledge
which
I shall compare with the modern concept of representation in
cognitive
science. In the second part I will discuss some arguments developed by
hermeneutics which in its reflection on human understanding rejoins, on
a more general level, the results attained by modern philosophy of
science
concerning the structure of scientific thought. Finally, I consider
information
science, information retrieval and the meaning of the information
concept
within the framework of hermeneutics.

I. EPISTEMOLOGICAL ROOTS OF THE
INFORMATION CONCEPT

1.
English
Roots

In
his
famous English dictionary dated 1755, Dr Johnson (1709-1784) (4)
mentions three uses of the word information, namely:

Intelligence
given; instruction

Charge
or accusation exhibited

The
act
of informing or actuation.

The
second
meaning is a special application in the field of law of the first
epistemological
sense. The third use refers to ontology which has not changed since
ancient
times. Both meanings have their roots in Greek philosophy but I shall
not
deal with the ontological meaning in this lecture.

According
to Dr Johnson, information means intelligence given,
that
is, it indicates the act of telling something to somebody who
(probably)
ignores the content of the message. The use of this term in everyday
English
goes back to the end of the 14th century. The term instruction
is related to the process of education. Let us now look at one of Dr
Johnson's
quotations from Shakespeare's Coriolanus. An imprisoned slave
seems
to know about a forthcoming invasion. Brutus does not trust him and
suggests
that he should be "whipp'd" or beaten. Menenius answers Brutus in the
following
way:

"(...)
But reason with the fellow, Before
you punish him, where he heard this, Lest
you shall chance to whip your information, And
beat the messenger who bids beware Of
what is to be dreaded." (Coriolanus,
Act IV, Scene VI).

As we
can hear, information is familiarly related to concepts such
as:
to reason with somebody, to listen to what somebody has to say, to a
messenger
and to his message. There is a context of ignorance and expectation but
also of common knowledge to which the information is supposed to be
significant. Information is a concept situated in the field of
human
language
and intersubjectivity. It refers to the process of telling something to
somebody and to the content being transmitted. In short, it indicates a
major human characteristic.

As
you are well aware, this sense still prevails in today's English as
well
as in many other modern languages. If we consult The Oxford English
Dictionary (5), we find a
major distinction between
the epistemological
and the ontological meaning. With regard to the epistemological meaning
the following differences are listed:

The
action
of informing, formation or moulding of the mind or character, training,
instruction, teaching.

The
act
of informing; communication of the knowledge or 'news' of some fact or
occurrence; the act of telling or the fact of being told of something.

Knowledge
communicated concerning some particular fact, subject, or event; that
of
which one is appraised or told; intelligence, news.

The
act
of informing against, charging, or accusing (a person).

Special
in English Law.

In
other
legal systems.

The
three
last meanings are related to the special application in the legal
field.
Key senses are again the process of communicating something to somebody
as well as the content of the message. When Claude Shannon and Warren
Weaver
develop their mathematical theory of communication, they
explicitly
refer to this epistemological meaning. They write:

"As
commonly used, information is a very elastic term, and it will first be
necessary to set up for it a more specific meaning as applied to the
present
discussion."

They intend
to eliminate, as they say, the "psychological factors" involved in this
concept, in order to establish a "measure of information in terms of
purely
physical quantities." (6)

This
is of course a licit methodological procedure, but, as I shall remark
later,
it can lead to some confusion when the original sense still
pervades
the derivative or analogical uses. Anyway, neither Shannon nor Weaver
intend
to forget the specific common meaning of information,
i.e.,
the semantic and pragmatic levels of the concept. These levels were
emphasized
by Ch. W. Morris (7), Y.
Bar-Hillel (8),
D. M. MacKay (9) and others,
and they are, I
believe,
essential to the use of the information concept within information
science.

2.
Thomas
Aquinas on Information

This
is
a very large and complex subject indeed. The Latin term informatio
as it was coined by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) implies ontological,
epistemological,
pedagogical and linguistic senses. I shall refer to the epistemological
use, pointing out its close connection to the concepts of intellect (intellectus)
and perception (sensus).

Aquinas'
theory of knowledge is deeply rooted in Greek and particularly in
Aristotelian
psychology and metaphysics. According to Aquinas man consists of an
intimate
union between matter, which is a potency, and the soul (anima),
the active principle, which in-forms matter. The result of this
union or information (in the ontological sense of the word) is
a
sensitive and intelligent being (10).

Aquinas
applies this scheme to the analysis of human knowledge. He calls the
knowing
principle anima intellectiva, which includes the sensitive
principle
or anima sensitiva. To know an object means the capability of
the
passive (or possible) intellect to grasp the species or form of
the object. The Latin term species translates Aristotle's term eidos,
and it may mean the sensible individual form of things or a universal
concept.
Both senses are interrelated with the process of knowledge. The
sensible
form informs the sensation and the passive intellect (informatio
sensus, informatio intellectus possibilis), being the
active
intellect which produces the act of understanding through the
abstraction
of the universal concept from the representational form or phantasma.
Material and sensible things are understood to the extent that they are
apprehended by sense, represented by imagination, and made intelligible
by the intellect.

A
characteristic
of human knowledge is the combined movement of abstractio and conversio
(from/to the representational form or phantasma). Following
Aristotle,
Aquinas does not think, as Plato did, that for us a direct
knowledge
of universal concepts could be possible. We have only a knowledge of
material
things through the process of universalisation. Aquinas'
technical
term for this operation is conversio ad phantasmata. In other
words,
human understanding is neither purely intellectual nor purely sensible
but a unity of both. Scientific knowledge which is of the necessary and
universal is considered by Aquinas as the application (by reflection)
of
universal objects (concepts, definitions etc.), which are designed
names,
to particular things.

Although
modern philosophy criticized many aspects of this paradigm, the term information
plays a significant role, for example, in the English empiricist
tradition
(J. Locke, G. Berkeley, D. Hume), in Th. Reid's Philosophy of
Common
Sense and in W. Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences
(11). In all cases it
refers to the
mediation between
the mind and the objects as they are perceived by our senses. According
to Whewell, "ideas" are "informed sensations" (not "transformed"),
i.e.,
they are a product of the formative power of the mind on
sensations.
As indicated by its original meaning in Latin, the term informatio
is very close in its meaning to the concept of representation,
which
is a key concept of modern cognitive science.

Let
us now examine this briefly, before we compare epistemological theory
with
the theory of understanding as developed by modern hermeneutics.

3.
Information and Representation

In a
recent
comprehensive and interdisciplinary analysis of the information concept
Fritz Machlup remarks that representation is one of the key
concepts
of modern cognitive science. He writes:

"It
is not always clear just what is being represented and what is
representing.
One would imagine our knowledge representing something observed or
assumed
in the external world or our knowledge being represented by something
going
on or retained in our brain or nervous system; or our knowledge being
represented
by some expressions (visual, auditory and tactile), artifacts (sings,
signals,
symbols and codes), or various kinds of action (meaningful and
communicable
to others). Assuming that the stingy economyzers of prepositions mean
not
representation by knowledge but representation of
knowledge,
we rule out the first of the three possible meanings; considering that
most users much of the time do their research using computers, we rule
out the second meaning. Thus, we conclude that representations in
question
are largely in terms of computer programs." (12)

Representation
by knowledge, in the first of
the two
senses mentioned
by Machlup,
i.e., representation by knowledge of something observed, or
representation
of knowledge in our minds, begins to signify something very similar to
the meaning of the term informatio as it was used in medieval
epistemology
as well as in the empiricist tradition, while representation of
knowledge refers to the knowledge contents and to the possible ways
they
can be objectivized. The difference between the traditional
epistemological
meaning of informatio and information and the modern
use
of representation is commented upon in a letter by the
psychologist
George A. Miller to Machlup, in which he refers to the importance of
this
concept in the rationalist epistemological tradition since Descartes.
He
writes:

"The
cognitive sciences are those scientific disciplines sharing an interest
in the representation and transformation of knowledge (read information
in the present context). (...) You are certainly right (...) that representation
is a keyword in cognitive science. Historically, philosophers since
Descartes
have assumed that the mind somehow copies, reflects, or represents the
real world, so representation is hardly a new idea. The philosophers,
however,
immediately raised the question of how we can possibly know whether or
not the mental representation of the real world is correct, true,
valid.
At this point Hume, then Kant, then dozens of others were able to
create
professional philosophy out of the epistemological (metaphysical)
problems
that resulted. When cognitive scientists revert to the problem of
representation,
therefore, one assumes (or at least hopes) they have a better strategy
in mind than the philosophers did, that there are other more important
questions to ask about representations other than their accuracy, since
that question is known to lead straight out of empirical science." (13)

As a
psychologist
Miller sees the potential relevance of the study of representational
processes
through machines in order to learn more about mental representations.
This
relevance is, according to Margaret Boden (14),
debatable
when we consider the differences between our embodiment and a machine,
between human behavior and computer programs or between the social
dimension
of human perception and action. The modern concept of representation
refers
to three kinds of problems:

The
type
of knowledge to be represented

How
it
should be represented

For
whom
it should be represented.

Cognitive
science, as Machlup remarks, concentrates on the two first questions.
The
third question points to a basic problem, as it states that knowledge
representations
cannot be considered as such because of the fact that knowledge is
being
represented but because these representations are related to an
interpreter.
This raises the question of (human) understanding as an interpretation
process and particularly as interpretation of represented knowledge.
This
is the key issue of the hermeneutic approach. Margaret Boden explicitly
refers to hermeneutic and intentional theories as a conceptual basis
for
the discussion about the analogy between human subjectivity and
computational
performances (15).

II.
THE HERMENEUTIC PARADIGM OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

1.
Preliminary
Remarks

Hermeneutics
as a philological discipline dealing with the problems of text
interpretation
has a very long tradition that I cannot evoke here (16).
I shall concentrate on the paradigm developed by philosophical
hermeneutics
that is an attempt to explore the complex issue of human understanding
including the question of text interpretation.

The
hermeneutic paradigm was developed by the philosopher Hans-Georg
Gadamer
(1900- ) (17) on the basis of
Edmund Husserl's
(1859-1938)
phenomenology and Martin Heidegger's (1889-1976) existential analytic.
This paradigm has been criticized by different philosophical schools.
Some
of these criticisms have lead to a mutual fructification and, in some
cases,
to similar results. This was possible because in many cases the spirit
of polemics has been overcome by the spirit of dialogue and
argumentation.

Before
considering some of the main features of the hermeneutic paradigm I
would
like to mention three main criticisms that should be kept in mind when
talking about hermeneutics:

Critical
rationalists (18) criticized
the attempts of
hermeneutics
to become a special methodology for the humanities or Geisteswissenschaften
in contraposition to the methodology of the natural sciences based on
causal
explanations. This discussion was based partly on mutual
misunderstanding
but it lead to some interesting insights to which I refer later.
Hermeneutics
was accused of dogmatism as it seemed to be in search of some kind of
definite
ground or evidence. In my opinion, hermeneutics is eo ipso
conjectural
and in no case is there a claim for absolute knowledge or
definite
solutions.

Analytic
philosophers criticized the tendency of hermeneutics to considering the
meaning of words as something objective at least in the sense
of
an intentional object of the mind. But meanings, they say, are
dependent
of their use or of the context in which they are used. We can call this
the contextual argument (19).
This argument is
to be
considered with regard to the hermeneutic concept of pre-understanding.

Critical
theory (20), finally, accused
hermeneutics of
lacking
reflection on problems concerning psychoanalysis and political
ideologies.
With regard to psychoanalysis I will just mention the work of Jacques
Lacan
who was influenced by Martin Heidegger and H.-G. Gadamer. The second
criticism
leads to ethical questions as developed by K.O. Apel (21).

Let
us
examine now the hermeneutic paradigm on the basis of two discourses
which
I call the existential and the contextual-critical
discourse.

2.
The
Existential Discourse

This
argument
was originally developed by Husserl's phenomenology and Heidegger's
existential
analytics. Its starting point can be explained as follows.

Traditional
epistemology, including the modern one, as we have already seen,
regarded
the question concerning human knowledge to be a problem of the relation
between a knower and an object that are separated from each other and
come
to a partial fusion, called by Kant a synthesis. Phenomenology
states,
in opposition to this dualism, the original connection or intentionality
of knower and the known (object), building an original whole. But this whole,
as Heidegger remarked, is not to be considered
idealistically,
as the field of subjective consciousness, but as the world or world-openness
that is being shared by the human community. This shared world is the
field
of human existence or Dasein.

This
argument is a challenge to the underlying assumption of dogmatic
skepticism
concerning the question of the existence of an outside reality
as
it is asked by an isolated and capsule-like subjectivity.
Following the existential argument, we already share the
world-openness
together with others. Already means that the presupposition of
a
worldless subjectivity made on the ground of the Lebenswelt,
as Husserl called it. Man's being-in-the-world is furthermore
not
of the kind of a passive or mere theoretical observer, but of acting
with
others creating a common world through language (22).

Hannah
Arendt (1906-1975) calls the existential dimension in all its variety
and
complexity, "the web of human relationships". In her remarkable
work The Human Condition she writes:

"Action
and speech go on between men, as they are directed toward them, and
they
retain their agent-revealing capacity even if their content is
exclusively objective, concerned with the matters of the world
of
things in
which men move, which physically lies between them and out of which
arise
their specific, objective, worldly interests. These interests
constitute,
in the word's most literal significance, something which interest,
which lies between people and therefore can relate and bind them
together.
Most action and speech is concerned with this in-between, which varies
with each group of people, so that most words and deeds are about
some worldly objective reality in addition to being a disclosure of the
acting an speaking agent. Since this disclosure of the subject is an
integral
part of all, even the most objective intercourse, the physical,
worldly in-between along with its interests is overlaid and, as it
were,
overgrown with an altogether different in-between which consists of
deeds
and words and owes its origin exclusively to men's acting and speaking
directly to one another.This
second, subjective in-between is not tangible, since there are no
tangible
objects into which it would solidify; the process of acting and
speaking
can leave behind no such results and end products. But for all its
intangibility,
this in-between is no less real than the world of things we visible
have
in common. We call this reality the web of human relationships,
indicating by the metaphor its somewhat intangible quality." (23)

In
other
words, an objectivist (or materialist) epistemology intend so divide
the objective from the subjective web or in-between
considering
the last one a less real superstructure, while subjectivist (or
idealist)
epistemology tries to do the contrary. Existential hermeneutics
stresses
the original unity of our being-in-the-world, allowing us to live in a
pluralistic world, sharing (or not) what is between us.
Theoretical
knowledge is not something separated from the vita activa
(Arendt)
which implies labour, work and action. Thinking is, according to
Arendt,
"the highest and perhaps purest activity of which men are capable."
(24)
In other words, human understanding is not an isolated human capacity
but
a key phenomenon implying world-openness (or the in-between),
intersubjectivity, language and human action. This brings some
traditional
epistemological paradigms to their feet.

3.
The
Contextual-Critical Discourse

This
argument
has to do with the linguistic dimension of human understanding.
According
to medieval and modern epistemology the process of knowledge and the
process
of expressing the known are two separate events. Hermeneutics, on the
contrary,
considers our being-with-others sharing a common world as articulating
itself through language. This linguistically shared common world
disclosure
builds an non-thematic pre-understanding of the world upon
which
all thematic interpretation is already based. Hermeneutics criticizes
the tabula-rasa theory of knowledge, according to which the
mind is
a kind of pure observer reproducing an outside objective
reality.

Modern
philosophy of science - for example Karl Popper's conception of
knowledge
as intrinsically "theory-laden" - has stated a similar view. In fact,
Popper
criticizes the attempt to create a separate methodology for the
humanities,
as a subjectivist view. But his own theory is similar to the
hermeneutic
discourse. The process of testing theories through experience can be
considered
as a specific application in the field of scientific methodology of the
dynamic relationship between situation, comprehension and
interpretation,
metaphorically called the hermeneutic circle. Also the
(scientific)
process of conjectures and refutations can be considered as a
specific
form of the process of questions and answers as analyzed by hermeneutic
theory. In his seminal work Truth and Method (25)
Gadamer conceived the role of prejudices (Vorurteile) as
something pertaining necessarily to human understanding. In other
words,
human knowledge is always biased, pre-understanding can never be
completely
eliminated.

The
ambitious paradigm of the Enlightenment (sapere aude) should be
understood as a request that we should be aware of the limitations or,
as hermeneutics says, horizons within which we determine the
possible
sense of what appears to us. Popper speaks of the "horizon of
expectations"
and Thomas S. Kuhn (26) has
made clear the
importance
of "paradigms" in the sense of a shared body of concrete expectations,
which guides the work of "normal science", and which can be criticized
and radically changed in periods of "revolutionary science".

In
a more general way, hermeneutics states that not only science but human
life itself is constantly dependent on pre-understanding or, as Gadamer
says, on "prejudices". He writes:

"Prejudices
are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous, so that they inevitably
distort the truth. In fact, the historicity of our existence entails
that
prejudices, in the literal sense of the word, constitute the initial
directedness
of our whole ability to experience. Prejudices are biases of our
openness
to the world. They are simply conditions whereby we experience
something
- whereby what we encounter says something to us." (27)

In other
words, the tabula-rasa theory of knowledge is nothing but a
myth
and conversily, we are not prisoners of our prejudices but criticize
them
and even use them in a productive way. Objectivity is the product of
our
biased intersubjectivity. It rests upon presuppositions and it is
always
open to revision.

The
Norwegian philosopher G. Floistad has recently remarked the parallel
between
the insights of hermeneutics and philosophy of science. He writes:

"From
the point of view of hermeneutic and structuralist theories of
language,
the meaning of a perceptual judgement is determined not merely by its
theoretical
superstructure, but by the wider context of ordinary language. The
perceptual
judgement and the theory of which it is a part, as well as scientific
notions,
statements and theories in general, are thoroughly embedded in ordinary
language and ordinary ways of life. The significance of such overall
claims
are certainly difficult to assess. Hermeneutics and structuralism are
on
this point strongly influenced by the phenomenology of Husserl and
Heidegger.
Acccording to phenomenology, our access to 'world' or 'reality' is
conditioned
by its constitution in our consciousness or understanding. And ordinary
language or daily 'forms of life' play an important role in that
reality-constitution.
This is in principle no different from saying that
observation-statements
are interpretations whose meaning is theory-dependent. Hermeneutics and
structuralism merely extend this principle into all realms of human
life
or consciousness. That is to say, the language-dependent view of
reality
in scientific understanding and explanation is but an application of a
general principle to be found in all uses of languages. It appears to
be
a sort of Kantian property of our consciousness or understanding. And
the
application of this principle in science certainly derives its overall
meaning from this general principle, common to both ordinary and
constructed
uses of languages." (28)

Gadamer
calls this evolutionary interaction between pre-understandings "fusion
of horizonts" ("Horizontverschmelzung"). The process of
understanding
is essentially an open and therefore a critical one. Its results are
context-dependent
and can always be criticized from other viewpoints. It is interesting
to
remember that the idea of the fragility and relativity of human
knowledge
was considered to be a weakness of the so-called soft sciences
for
a long time, while the exact sciences were praised by the
certainty
of their results. Neither hermeneutics nor philosophy of science are,
by
any means, aiming at diminishing the strength of scientific
methodologies.
We are coming of age, that is all.

With
the conception of human understanding as a world-open not vitious but
creative circular and intersubjective self-conditioned
language-game, hermeneutics
is pointint to something as fascinating as ... Gödel, Escher,
Bach,
and Douglas Hofstadter (29).

III.
HERMENEUTICS AND INFORMATION SCIENCE

1.
Recent
Studies

Several
authors, information scientists as well as philosophers, have
considered
the relationship between hermeneutics and information science. Having
the
honor to held this lecture in Stockholm I would like to mention first
the
work of Börje Langefors. The following quotation may give a
general
idea about his infological approach:

"If
data are what is handled by computers and information is what is to be
served to people, then information is totally distinct in kind from
data.
Information is of the same kind as knowledge and data must form
sentences
in some language. Data inform if they bring about changes in the
knowledge
of the users. This will only happen if the data (or sentences) are
formed
in correspondence with the knowledge structure (S) of the user. Data,
or
sentences, do not 'contain' information, they only 'represent'
information
fragments and the information becomes established only if these
fragments
are brought into connection with a knowledge 'whole'. This was brought
out in terms of the 'infological equation' (Langefors 1966):

I
= i (D,S,t)

Where
I ist the information (or knowledge change) established by the transfer
of some data (or signs) D. The equation is meant to stress that to
obtain
information (I) from certain data (D), an information process (i) is
needed
and the process requires a certain time (t). Furthermore the outcome of
the process (I) is whole dependent on the 'pre-knowledge' structure S
available
to the process (thus to the data user). To 'understand' the data or
receive
the information will mean to conceive of a situation or event observed
by somebody else and recorded as D. A deeper understanding may then
result
by the process (user) drawing all sorts of conclusions from the
information
received. All this, clearly, will depend on (other parts of) S. It is
immediately
obvious that the knowledge structure S implies all the kinds of
problems
recently articulated under 'buss words' such as paradigms, world-view,
language games, ideology, personal styles and hermeneutics. It should
also
be clear that the data D are, basically, any real-life pattern that may
be not only perceived but also 'understood' or interpreted in some
way." (30)

Langefors
has successfully integrated the concept of pre-understanding in a
theory
of information science. However, the question still remains as how far
he still conceives human existence under the premise of a capsule-like
subjectivity. Nevertheless, intersubjectivity and the idea of a
community
of interpreters play a central role in his infology.

Alwin
Diemer and Norbert Henrichs, founders of the philosophy documentation
center
at Düsseldorf University, have made important contributions to an information
science hermeneutics (31).
Following Husserl's phenomenology - and particularly the terminology of
knower/"noesis" and its correlate the known/"noema"
-, Diemer
calls thought content being transmitted in the information process "Informem".
Informemes are constituted by the intersubjective
process of understanding
and they are identified in different ways through the processes of
indexing
and abstracting. The core of Diemer's informations science
hermeneutics
can be seen in the phenomenological relationship between the informemes
and the interpretation community(ies). Informemes are
constituted
through the mediation of the interpreter's pre-understanding which is
itself
part of the of pre-understanding of a scientific community. The
computer
processes only data or tokens. Diemer's approach was,
as
far as I know, the first attempt to consider the whole information
field
from the point of view of hermeneutics. Some of his ideas were further
developed by Henrichs.

Henrichs'
approach (32) is based on
hermeneutics as well
as on
Peirce's semiotics. Object, sign and interpreter, Peirce's central
categories,
constitute the underlying structure of the information field. If we
consider
the information concept from a semiotic perspective, we can distinguish
between the meaning or content of the messages, the signs used to
represent
it, and the interpreters (producer, mediators, recipients). A
characteristic
of Peirce's semiotics as well as of Henrichs' approach is the
non-separability
of these three elements. It would be absurd to speak, for instance, of
meaning (or knowledge) in itself, i.e., without any
relation
to an interpreter as well as to signs denotating it.

The
production of meaning and the processing of linguistic signs becomes
informational
when we regard them within the horizon of a community of interpreters.
Information is a social category. Characteristic of this approach is
the
close relationship between hermeneutic and semiotic categories. These
ideas
were applied at the philosopher's documentation center of the
University
of Düsseldorf. This system is based on a non-standardized indexing
method without taking into account the disadvantages of free-text. The
fidelity to the sign level is compensated by a special consideration of
the user's pre-understanding at the retrieval side. Henrichs' paradigm
of information science is still a torso.

Finally
I will mention the ASK-theory developed by N.J. Belkin, R. N. Oddy and
H. M. Brooks (33). ASK
stands for anomalous
states
of knowledge and means that

"an
information need arises from a recognized anomaly in the user's state
of
knowledge concerning some topic or situation and that, in general, the
user is unable to specify precisely what is needed to resolve that
anomaly." (34)

According
to this theory the information retrieval process should make possible
to
actively interact with the requester's knowledge structures, i.e., IR
systems
should be able to initiate a dialogue with the user's large-scale
intentions
without asking him to specify first his information need. Belkin
stresses
the importance of the user's "conceptual state of knowledge" which is
in
interaction with his "image of the world". He writes:

"interactions
of humans with one another, with the physical world and with themselves
are always mediated by their states of knowledge about themselves and
about
that with which or with whom they interact. The IR situation is seeing
as a 'recipient-controlled communication system, aimed at resolving the
expressed information needs of humans, primarily via texts produced by
other human beings." (35)

The key
role played by the recipient's knowledge structure in this theory
validates
in some way its designation as a hermeneutic one. But the emphasis on
the
individual users should be expanded to the user's community with which
he/she shares a similar knowledge structure and from whom he/she
expects
to get some help in order to solve the anomalies.

Where
K(S) is an existing knowledge affected by some increment of information
D I, and K (S+ D S) is the modified structure. Brookes relates this
equation
to objective knowledge in the Popperian sense of World 3.
Ingwersen's
adapts this model within the cognitive paradigm relating explicitly
objective
knowledge to a human knowledge structure (Popper's World 2)
which
it eventually modifies. But even in this modification does not take
intersubjectivity
into full consideration.

2.
A
Hermeneutic Foundation of Information Science

The
following
is a rough outline of a hermeneutic foundation of information science
that
takes into account the existential as well as the contextual-critical
discourses
previously explained. Information science is thus delimited with regard
to a general theory of information and communication. Delimitations are
usually controversial. The field of scientific and technical
information
has proved to be too restricted with regard, for instance, to societal
information and to all kinds of professional information that are not
produced
by research centers and the like. I use the term specialized
information
(Fachinformation) in this broad sense. Three basic parameters
are
necessary for its constitution: professional communities, special
fields
of research or action, a communication process based mainly on
represented
knowledge.

a)
Professional
communities

Producers
and users of specialized information are not isolated individuals but
belong
to professional communities. These share common theoretical and
practical
interests that build up their horizon of pre-understanding. This
specific
"in-between" of a professional community belongs to the "'web' of human
relationships" (Arendt) as mentioned above. Thus, problems and
questions
are interrelated in different ways within the whole of the existential
structure as well as within the concrete personality system of the
individual
user, i.e., of his/her social, cultural, political, geographical,
linguistic
etc. system of reference. One major aim of information science is the
study
of users not as isolated individuals but as members of professional
communities.
Information science is (so far) particularly concerned with the study
of
how scientists obtain information. The concept of specialized
information
refers then to the communication of knowledge contents to one (or
several)
professional communities. Information in information science is a
social
category. The term professional points to a more general target
as the term scientific community. This is, I believe, a
necessary
and useful extended sense as it takes into consideration the whole
range
of theoretical and practical issues that constitute the core of
advanced
technological societies.

We
usual think about professionals as people with an in-depth knowledge in
one specific field. The physicist Werner Heisenberg has a different
view.
For him a professional (Fachmann) is a person who knows some
important
mistakes in his/her field, and how to avoid them (37).
In other words, professionals are conscious of some major anomalies
in their fields. They have a questioning attitude, as they have learned
to be cautious. This means, paradoxically, that we should look upon
professionals
from the point of view of their ignorance. A very Socratic viewpoint
indeed.
The study of information processes within professional communities are
at the core of information science. There is need for research on a
sociological
theory of professional communities, not just on a sociology of science.
We need to explore the ways professionals gather and interpret
information
in order to solve their problems (38).
To
consider
hermeneutically professional communities as a core issue of
information
science means to criticize:

an isolating
view of users and their cognitive structures,

a restrictive
view on scientific communities,

a purely
objective view of represented information.

b)
Special
Fields of Research or Action

Special
fields of research or action is the second parameter necessary for the
constitution of specialized information. They are the correlate of a
professional
community and their pre-understanding. K. Popper is right, on the one
hand,
when he states that we do not investigate subject matters or
disciplines
but problems (39). But
problems are, on the
other hand,
related to specific frameworks of theories, beliefs, traditions,
interests
and so on. In Popper's words, we can say that as there are no brute
facts - facts are always theory-impregnated - there are also no brute
problems. Special fields of research and action are not necessarily
identical with subject disciplines in universities. In information
science
the question of delimitation of a subject field plays a significant
role.
Databases and expert systems are basically always related to of a scope
or subject field. Some of the empirical laws in our field, for
instance
Bradford's law, refer to the regularities of the core literature of a
subject
field.

The
concept of subject fields has radically changed with regard, for
instance,
to the classification schemes of the 19th century. We can
call
this change a Copernican revolution. Instead of considering knowledge
something
static and permanent in the center of a (library) system, we are now
aware
of the constitutive role played by the interpreter and user of such
schemes.
This means a dynamic view of knowledge schemes as something which is
"in-between"
the members of a professional community, i.e., constituted by their
horizon
of expectations. The delimitation of a subject field also implies the
use
of a specialized vocabulary or language game (Wittgenstein).
The
study of the structure and use of such vocabularies including the use
of
logical devices in modern expert systems is a major concern of
information
science.

c)
Professional
communication

Communication
is a main concern of information scientists, particularly with regard
to
modern information technology. The technological view leaves aside, as
C. Shannon and W. Weaver remarked, the semantic and pragmatic levels of
communication. These levels are at the core of information science
research.
From a comprehensive view of human existence, communication, on the one
hand, cannot be reduced to the physical process of sending and
receiving
signals, but it is a specific human phenomenon. Freedom of thought, on
the other hand, cannot be considered idealistically, as something
independent
from the ways of its communication. Kant reminds us of this when he
writes:

"But,
how much and how correct could we think, if we would not do it together
with other people, to whom we can communicate our thoughts and they
theirs!" (40)

Communication
means making knowledge publicly available. The concept of information
points
to this potential availability, adding a new aspect to the concept of
knowledge: information is knowledge as seen form the point of view
of
its capacity
of being communicated. Here is the place where the concept of
representation
of knowledge as used by modern cognitive science becomes interesting
for
information science. In fact, for some information scientists such as
B.
C. Brookes, information is identical with objectivized
knowledge.
As Ingwersen remarks (41)
"objective
information" should
not be separated but dynamically integrated with the intersubjective
process
of interpretation. Information scientists are not interested in
building
knowledge structures in themselves in a pre-Copernican manner,
but
they study the interaction of represented knowledge with a user
community
whose pre-understanding of a specific field is supposed to be partially
objectivized.

The
concept of information in information science includes these three
dimensions:
a professional community, i.e. the producers, interpreters and users of
specialized information, a specific field of research or action to
which
(objectivized) thought contents are supposed to primarily refer, and a
communication process through which they are shared by the community of
interpreters.

The
following quotation by Martha Williams summarizes, I believe, this
hermeneutic
paradigm of information science:

"Information
science is the quest to understand the nature of information, man's
interaction
with information, and the communication process. It is a developing
discipline
and, although it uses the tools and techniques or technologies of many
other disciplines, it has its own subject matter (information) and its
own problems (human communications)." (42)

Information
and meaning are, on the one hand, very close concepts indeed, but they
are not identical, as the concept of meaning is not usually related to
that of communication. Information, on the other hand, should be
potentially
meaningful. Fred Dretske argues in a recent study (43)
that the concept of information should not be confused with meaning but
that it should be applied to all kinds of communication mechanisms.
From
the point of view of information science I agree with Langefors'
distinction
between data and information. Nevertheless, the information concept, as
we can see in its history, is a very rich one. A broad application can
be useful in order to stress the common ground of different phenomena,
as Dretske suggests. However, unless we are monists, analogy does not
mean
identity. As Bar-Hillel remarked (44)
we must
be careful
with the "semantic traps".

3.
Hermeneutics
and Information Retrieval

It
is
not difficult to see now the relevance of hermeneutics not only for
information
science but also for the information retrieval praxis.

Databases
(bibliographic, numeric, factual etc.) and other forms of knowledge
representation
such as expert systems are objectivizations of specific
pre-understandings.
Their scope or horizon is supposed to be the correlate of the one
shared
by a professional community. This must be clearly stated before the
input
of the information items into the computer takes place. Information
systems
are basically related to outside parameters. There is no absolute
system
as there is no absolute information. Classification schemes, indexing
methods
etc. delimit the possible horizon of interpretation of the
(bibliographic)
items. The online dialogue can be considered as a special kind of
hermeneutic
process. On the one side we have the fixed horizon of the system, while
on the other side there is the open or existential horizon
ofthe
inquirer. During the dialogue a "fusion of horizons" (H.-G. Gadamer)
takes
place on different levels (descriptors, descriptive categories,
contents
of abstracts, classification etc.). The partial identity or "fusion"
between
the horizon of the inquirer and the objectivized horizon of the system
is actively determined by the pre-understanding of the searcher and by
his/her question and query formulation(s).

As
far as the system corresponds to the user's pre-understanding behind
his/her
question(s) a partially positive answer or "fusion" takes place, such
as
(part of) the anomaly can be solved. In the case of bibliographic
databases
such a solution usually means some references to relevant
documents.
Thus, bibliographic databases only offer a very limited possibility for
a "fusion of horizons" with regard, for instance, to expert systems.
Our
capacity to build more intelligent information systems depends on our
insight
on the pre-understanding of a professional community. As D. R. Swanson
remarks, the retrieval process can be compared to a trial-and-error
process
in scientific research. He states, following Popper's ideas, the
following
analogy:

"Creative
research does not begin with a 'topic' but with a problem - a
researcher
must be puzzled, curious, in a sense 'bothered' about something. Even
this
is not enough - some initial conjecture as to the nature of a possible
solution to the problem at least must also be present. Theories are not
synthesized form observations. Quite the contrary; one cannot gather
data
or make an observation without first having a theory. (...)
Analogously,
we might look upon the process of information retrieval as a trial of a
conjecture, guided by some idea of what one is seeking. The principle
value
of the process lies not so much in the direct use of the retrieved
documents
but rather in the indirect function which they serve of stimulating a
reformulation
of the request. A request (...) is a conjecture, which he tests by
examining
the retrieved document." (45)

The retrieval
process can thus be primarily considered as a problem oriented
process
and not as a purely 'objective' or 'topic oriented' one. But it would
be
misleading, I believe, to divorce the horizon of the inquirer from the
one he shares with other colleagues and which is, of course, not
something
definite or 'objective' in a pre-Copernican way. The existential
ASK-situation
considers the problem to besolved as interrelated with the
pre-understanding
of a professional community as well as with problems, goals and
interests
which are finally shared in different ways by society in general. The
answers
of the system are thus matched against this complex background and just
against a query formulation or a discipline, dissociated from the whole
existential structure.

The
question of relevance in information retrieval must take these
different
levels into account. T. Saracevic (46)
has
summarized
this matter some years ago. In his excellent Introduction to Modern
Information Retrieval, G. Salton states a difference between an
objective
or system-oriented and a subjective or user-oriented relevance (47)
Of course it would be wrong to identify the process of information
retrieval
with the conception of scientific research as a trial-and-error
process.
Stephen P. Harter (48) has
recently emphasized
the
limits of this analogy. The motivation and the subsequent treatment of
the results differ significantly in online searching and in scientific
inquiry. He writes:

"the
raison d'etre of scientific research is its contribution to knowledge,
to our theoretical understanding of ourselves and our universe. The
purpose
of online information retrieval is much less grandiose. (...) The
results
obtained do not ordinarily become part of a knowledge base or larger
theory,
as do the results of research." (48, p. 111)

With regard
to the problem-oriented and the topic-oriented relevance we should
avoid
to divorce them, as we can no less divorce the individual inquirer from
the (professional) community.

F.
W. Lancaster (49) makes
a terminological
difference
between relevance as the relationship between a document
and
a request statement and pertinence as the relevance to
the
requester himself. Boths aspects are "subjective and equivocal"
though
"no less important in system evaluation". The reason for this paradox
is,
I believe, a (tacit) hermeneutic view of the pre-understanding of a
community,
subject matters being nothing objective or in themselves, but a
relative horizon of such a community.

Finally
we should be aware that the scientific process of testing hypothesis is
related to truth and falsity of theories, while there is no such
specific
intention in online searching. The underlying purpose is to search and
find presumably relevant information. The concepts of error and truth
as
used in scientific methodology would prove, in this context, to be
misleading.
Online searching is not restricted to scientific information but
concerns
different kinds of pragmatic interests. The concept of relevance has to
embrace all possible levels of the process, which thus can only
partially
be explained with the analogy of scientific inquiry.

Pointing
to the role of the inquirer as a correlate of a request, Swanson and
Harper
implicitly stress the intersubjective nature of information retrieval.
Hermeneutics offers a broad theoretical spectrum that enables a more
adequate
analysis of the information retrieval process as the specific model of
scientific inquiry. The dialectic of pre-understanding and
understanding,
i.e., of the critical "fusion" between questions and answers as a
biased
process is a process that leads always to tentative or conjectural
knowledge.
The present research in information retrieval heuretics should
be
considered with this broader hermeneutic frame.

CONCLUSION

Databases
and expert systems are, with the framework of hermeneutics,
objectivizations
of specific pre-understandings of professional communities.
Professional
knowledge and, correspondingly, information about it, is essentially
tentative
or non-authoritative. Communication is not only "the essence of
science"
(Garvey) (50) but a human
dimension. In a
recent report
on Artificial Intelligence (51)
some of the
lessens
learned so far are listed:

AI
is
much more difficult than expected

Heuristic
research is required to limit combinatorial explosion

The
lack
of contextual knowledge severely limits capability

Expectation
is a human characteristis of intelligence

It
is
difficult to handle a broad domain (e.g. common sense)

These
are highly hermeneutic lessons. Marvin Minsky (52) considers the modern
theories
of intelligence to be moving away from
traditional
attempts in Psychology and Artificial Intelligence trying to represent
knowledge as a collection of separate fragments. A key issue in the new
theories of intelligence is, according to Minsky, the concept of frame,
which he defines as a "data structure for representing a stereotyped
situation"
(p. 96). Minsky sees this frame concept in the tradition of Kuhn's
paradigms:
such a data-structure can be "a collection of questions to be asked
about
a hypothetical situation" (p. 109).

According
to Hubert Dreyfus, Minsky's proposals are closely related to
Husserl's
phenomenology. The result

"is
a step forward in AI techniques from a passive model of information
processing
to one which tries to take account of the context of the interactions
between
an expert and his world." (53)

But AI
comes to an impass when it tries to treat the background as an object.
This is, as Dreyfus states following Heidegger's criticism of Western
metaphysics,
a metaphysical assumption. Intelligence is situated. It cannot be
separated
from the rest of human life (53, p. 203). The assumption we could
represent
all "prejudices" is as illusory as the belief it could be possible to
obtain
unbiased knowledge.

To
be intelligent means, for men and information systems, to be able to
make
conjectural inferences from a bulk of foreknowledge. This is an old
truth.
Aristotle writes:

"All
teaching and learning by way of reasoning proceeds from pre-existing
knowledge." (54)

If we
are able to build up intelligent information systems this does not
necessarily
mean that they will become human. Just because being human
means
more than simply being intelligent.

(46)
T. Saracevic: Relevance: A Review of the Literature and a Framework for
Thinking on the Notion in Information Science. In: M.J. Voigt and M.H.
Harris Eds.: Advances in Librarianship. New York 1976, pp. 81-138.